Tad and I were headed back to his or the “safe” side of the river. Although, he was also just a “come here” in his own right, Tad enjoyed a unique status as a local curiosity. He was a true individualist with a heart of gold and not a judging bone in his body so when he and I were out in the Choking Doberman on his side of the river, we essentially got a free pass. The only problem is that we weren’t on his side of the river. We were still on my side where we enjoyed very few privileges aside from the occasional flirtatious glance from a local girl, but this only added fuel to the fire – I’ll get to that later. For now we were about one half mile from the turn off to the Rassanutten River bridge that connected Chamberlain and Leister counties. We were popping homemade cassettes of our fledgling band in and out of the tape deck when we saw the flickering red of a cherry top coming up fast behind us. With the Doberman in this county in this condition with Tad and I inside, we were in for a long night.

Of course we pulled over. Tad was behind the wheel this time as he was sober and I usually took over only when he had somehow procured alcohol which was not the case tonight. We waited as the large vehicle pulled up behind us and basically blinded us with the high set lights of an overly raised, ridiculously ramped up off road vehicle. Tad and I giggled nervously as we waited. I suppose he was doing a plate check. We had nothing to hide and no reason to scramble so we just sat their waiting for our fate. I swear it must have been about ten minutes. Tad finally turned off the car…

“What the hell are you two doin?”

Was all we heard as we were startled into looking out Tad’s window into the close set eyes of twitchy double barrel shotgun. No lie.

We were driving along in Tad’s 1962 For Galaxie 500. We nicknamed her “Choking Doberman”. I think it was going to be the name of our production company when we got around to becoming media moguls. For the time being, it was a very worn out ’62 Galaxie. As a side note, a few years later I would acquire a 1963 Chevy Nova as my first car and it would be christened something that I think Tad was secretly jealous of. We called her the “Gagging Chihuahua”.

Tad and I were driving the Chocking Doberman pretty much everywhere. I don’t recall how legal she was, but we somehow had both the state inspection and registration stickers proudly displayed on her surprisingly clear windshield. It was in this car on one particular night when we encountered Timmy, the son of an affluent local from my side of the river. Affluence usually guaranteed certain rights of way that the rest of us didn’t have Affluence was determined by the simple fact of where your family was from. If you were from one of the dozen or so local families you had it, if you were a “come here” you didn’t. I was most certainly a “come here”. Tad? He wasn’t even from this side of the river so he was essentially no better than a “tourist” or simply the lowest of the low, at least this was the case in the eyes of the affluent. Tonight was the night that Timmy decided to put the “law” into his own hands.